Comments by RevBrently

From Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (ISBN: 9780099529125), p. 208: "That was the most illogical Thanksgiving he could ever remember spending, and his thoughts returned wishfully to his halcyon fourteen-day quarantine in the hospital the year before...

From Joseph Keller's Catch-22 (ISBN: 9780099529125), p. 60: "While we waited, he spent each day shuffling rhythmically around the entrance of the operations tent, making boisterous wisecracks to everybody who came by and jocosely calling Sergeant Towser a lousy son of a bitch every time Sergeant Towser popped out of the orderly room."

There is no secular power that can hold a monk captive in his cloister; indeed, the anticlerical bias of many governments would consider every desertion as a blow against obscurantism and reactionary forces. But apostasy is very rare.

The Trappist life...by any normal criterion, is sombre and stern. But legend...has smothered its stark outlines with ivy-leaves of a still more baleful tinct. According to a rumor widespread in France, Trappist monks greet each other daily with the words Frère il faut mourir, and a mythical agendum in the duties of a monk is the digging of his own tomb, a few spadefuls a day... Many aspects of Trappist life lend additional verisimilitude.

Beyond, the grey buildings rose--the tall Norman refectory, The Duke de Stacpoole's fanciful arches, the Gothic quadrangular well of the cloisters, the high stone girdle of the Abbey pierced by the Abbé de Jarente's great doorway, scalloped and rococo.

I spent much of my limitless leisure walking in the country round the Abbey. The forested hills of the demesne are cut up into long zig-zag rides, tunnels of beech that converge upon moss-covered urns supported by a single Doric pillar.

They genuflected together, and the Mass began. Every moment the ceremony gained in splendour. If it was the feast of a great saint, the enthroned abbot was arrayed by his myrmidons in the pontificalia.

I found no trace of the Dark Ages here, no hint of necropolitan gloom or bigotry, still less of the ghastly breeziness that is such an embarrassing characteristic of many English clerics. There was no doubt of the respect in which they held the cause to which their lives were devoted; but their company was like that of any civilised well-educated Frenchman, with all the balance, erudition and wit that one expected, the only difference being a gentleness, a lack of haste, and a calmness which is common to the whole community.

Vellum-bound folios and quartos receded in vistas, and thousands of ancient and modern works on theology, canon law, dogma, patrology, patristics, hagiography, mysticism and even magic, and almost as many on secular history, art and travel.

Vellum-bound folios and quartos receded in vistas, and thousands of ancient and modern works on theology, canon law, dogma, patrology, patristics, hagiography, mysticism and even magic, and almost as many on secular history, art and travel.

Then began an extraordinary transformation: this extreme lassitude dwindled to nothing; night shrank to five hours of light, dreamless and perfect sleep, followed by awakenings full of energy and limpid freshness.

Then began an extraordinary transformation: this extreme lassitude dwindled to nothing; night shrank to five hours of light, dreamless and perfect sleep, followed by awakenings full of energy and limpid freshness.

The muted light in the church suspended a filament between us, reproducing the exact atmosphere of an early seventeenth-century studio in which--tonsured, waxen, austere and exsanguinous--were bowed in prayer the models of Zurbarán and El Greco.

The muted light in the church suspended a filament between us, reproducing the exact atmosphere of an early seventeenth-century studio in which--tonsured, waxen, austere and exsanguinous--were bowed in prayer the models of Zurbarán and El Greco.

Their eyelids were always downcast; and, if now and then they were raised, no treacherous glint appeared, nothing but a sedulously cultivated calmness, withdrawal and mansuetude and occasionally an expression of remote and burnt-out melancholy.

Their eyelids were always downcast; and, if now and then they were raised, no treacherous glint appeared, nothing but a sedulously cultivated calmness, withdrawal and mansuetude and occasionally an expression of remote and burnt-out melancholy.

From Peter Nichols' A Voyage for Madmen (p. 36; ISBN: 978-0-06-095703-2): "Elsewhere in the paper, Chichester, the paterfamilias seadog, was quoted: 'Some of these chaps don't know what they are letting themselves in for. If any of them succeed in getting round it will be remarkable. By comparison the Atlantic is about on the level of a canoe trip across the Serpentine.' "

From p. 104 of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: "Someone with a positive manner, perhaps a detective, used the expression 'madman' as he bent over Wilson's body that afternoon, and the adventitious authority of his voice set the key for the newspaper reports next morning."

From p. 96 of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: "For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes."

From p. 63 of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: "He was a son of God--a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that--and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty."

From p. 15 of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby: "Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come East."

From "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers (p. 60): "One day the manager of Webster Clothes, a menswear store across the road, had come into the drugstore and, admiring Kathy's ebullient personality, asked her if she'd be willing to quit K&B or, if not, take a second job at Webster."

Another example to add:
"Noetic refers to knowledge that comes to us directly through our subjective experiences or inner authority. This type of knowledge might take the form of an intuition that helps guide your decisions, or an epiphany that leads you to a creative breakthrough. Moreover, noetic experiences often carry an unusual level of authority that can help guide you to new understandings and new ways of being. Noetic experiences thus differ from the kind of knowledge that comes through reason or the objective study of the external world."
From p. 4 of Schlitz, M. M., Vieten, C., & Amorok, T. (2007). Living Deeply: The art & science of transformation in everyday life. New Harbringer Publications; Noetic Books: Oakland, CA.

Another example to add:
"On the night of their departure from Kvitoya, a dozen or so off-duty deckies gathered in the rec room for a kind of eschatological hootenanny, and soon the entire superstructure was resounding with "Rock of Ages," "Kum-Ba-Yah," "Go Down, Moses," "Amazing Grace," A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands.""
From pp. 355-356 of Morrow, James (1994). Towing Jehovah. New York: Harcourt.

Another example to add:
"On the night of their departure from Kvitoya, a dozen or so off-duty deckies gathered in the rec room for a kind of eschatological hootenanny, and soon the entire superstructure was resounding with "Rock of Ages," "Kum-Ba-Yah," "Go Down, Moses," "Amazing Grace," A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands.""
From pp. 355-356 of Morrow, James (1994). Towing Jehovah. New York: Harcourt.

Another example to add:
"Cassie closed her eyes, allowing the spiritual to coil through the her unquiet soul, and by the time the last echo of the last syllable had died away, she knew that no being, supreme or otherwise, had ever received a more sonorous send-off to the dark, icy gates of oblivion."
From p. 355 of Morrow, James (1994). Towing Jehovah. New York: Harcourt.